In the Age of the Always-On, Connected Consumer, Brands Still Struggle to Engage, Drive Revenue

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Matt Harris is co-founder and CEO of Sendwithus. He has extensive email and product expertise, acquired working with Fortune 500 clients and contracting for Government and private software companies. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Victoria, he cut his startup chops in the inaugural cohort of FounderFuel, a Montreal startup accelerator. A self- proclaimed hacker, email nerd, and avid rock climber, Matt co-founded Sendwithus in 2013.

New research shows 77 percent of CMOs feel their brand is failing to realize the full revenue potential of their customers. Sendwithus Co-Founder and CEO Matt Harris examines this data and identifies where marketers are missing out

Today’s marketers have the ability to engage with customers through email, websites, and social networks, using meaningful data their predecessors could only dream of having access to. Why, then, do 77% of CMOs report their brands are failing to realize the full revenue potential of their customers? One reason is their continued focus on initiatives that drive top-of-funnel growth, bolstering new customer acquisition while overlooking opportunities to deepen loyalty among existing customers. One reality of business, however, remains constant: It costs more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one.

The statistic mentioned above is just one of the findings of a survey we recently conducted in partnership with the CMO Council. What we found interesting is the fact that a survey from 2008 showed 76% of respondents answering the same question in the same way, revealing that brands aren’t doing any better at realizing the revenue potential of existing customers today than they were ten years ago. Which leads us to ask — what’s missing from these senior marketers’ approach?

CMOs understand the value of personalized communications with customers — 94% of survey respondents believe this approach is critical to achieving profitable customer experiences. A majority of respondents also indicate that personalizing communications across all touchpoints and identifying new ways to cross- and upsell are their main strategies to profit more from their existing customer base. These strategies, you may notice, all focus on delivering relevant experiences.

A closer look at the data reveals that the disconnect lies in the “when” aspect of delivering those experiences. While many marketers have honed their approach when it comes to promotional emails, delivering fine-tuned, pre-purchase messaging, few have leveraged transactional and triggered emails as a means of furthering customer relationships post-purchase. Even though 36% said they believe these emails represent an opportunity to reinforce the relationship with the customer, only 30% of respondents use these vital touchpoints to engage their customers on a deeper, more meaningful level. And while 30% of senior marketers believe they actually are engaging through triggered emails, they admit those emails do nothing more than acknowledge a past transaction. They miss the opportunity to deepen the customer relationship by offering a related product or service, suggesting the user opt-in to receive promotional offers, or by sharing information relevant to their industry.

So why have marketers been missing the boat on this potentially massive opportunity? One reason is that transactional emails often fall outside a marketer’s scope of responsibility. More than 30% of marketers say these emails are created in another department, leaving little opportunity for their input or alignment. This means that a loyal, repeat customer, one who marketing has flagged as tier 1, could receive a simple, plain-text order confirmation in their inbox, instead of a meaningful email that recognizes them as a valued customer, with relevant recommendations and offers, such as an exclusive discount or an invitation to a private beta launch.

Additionally, 12% of marketers admit that the reason these communications are not being leveraged is that their teams are struggling to align. Bridging departmental silos is a crucial step that marketers must take to ensure the optimization of every touchpoint in the customer journey. When asked to identify the stakeholders in the development and deployment of transactional emails, respondents indicated the most important groups were line-of-business leadership (69%), product teams (58%), service and support (47%), channel teams and partners (47%), and internal creative teams (45%). It’s clear collaboration between all the teams who have a stake in the creation, optimization, and deployment of transactional and triggered emails must be improved.

Some survey respondents are trying to facilitate this kind of cross-functional collaboration — 29% go the meeting route, 26% rely on team leaders to collect feedback from stakeholders as campaigns are deployed — but a shocking 18% have no formal way of working together. And just 25% are using any kind of collaboration tool, with a mere 14% taking advantage of a centralized platform.

Whichever way your brand tackles this issue, empowering collaboration between stakeholders is critical to turning transactional, triggered, and automated emails into loyalty-inspiring and revenue-producing opportunities.